A Hempstead woman is distraught over the removal of her son's makeshift memorial by village employees.

Donna May says when she went to put up a new memorial at Lincoln Park for her son, Jamal Floyd, Wednesday she noticed the old one was gone.

"Why would they do something like that?" says James Floyd, Jamal's father. "I said let the dead be dead."

May is blaming the new Hempstead Village Mayor Waylyn Hobbs, who just took office this week.

May says she cried and could not get herself together yesterday.

"We did not know then but after we did our investigation, we realized it was the DPW department," says Sedgwick Easley, the executive assistant to Mayor Hobbs. "They have been going around cleaning up the streets."

Easley says taking down the memorial was not the directive of the mayor. He says the Department of Public Works took it upon themselves to remove a large number of makeshift memorials as well as some signs around the village in a cleanup effort.

Easley says village officials will be having discussions about how long makeshift memorials can stay on village property before they are removed. That decision will be announced publicly sometime in the future.